


A Thousand Paper Stars

by OrtegaTrash (Malicei)



Series: Fallen Hero Fics [8]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Drabble, Genderqueer Character, Identity Issues, Minor Character Death, Moving On, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Other, Pre-Relationship, cultural disconnection, imposter syndrome, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 17:36:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malicei/pseuds/OrtegaTrash
Summary: You keep seeing her ghost in them. Ricardo and Chen can't ever replace the woman you loved, but maybe it's time to finally move on and see them for themselves in their own right.





	A Thousand Paper Stars

**Author's Note:**

> ARAN SUEN - SUEN WANFAA 孙芸花  
> [Cautious | anonymous | underworld contacts | tactician | mob boss]  
> Nonbinary, she/her. Puppetmaster scar, fate motivation. Alcohol vice.
> 
> Pre-Sidestep/Ortega/Steel. Mentions of minor character death.

_A thousand paper stars_  
Wishes in the night  
A little girl sits on the doorstep and wipes away her tears.

_Kept within a jar_  
A collection of lost hopes  
And dreams for a future that never came to pass.

_I wish for prosperity,_  
I wish for love  
And the freedom to make my own way in life.

_But now I collect only scars_  
And I don’t know how long I can go  
Before I break.

* * *

 

Sarah Wu is the first person who ever really finds you, the prettiest silk black hair and dark eyes that curled up at the edges ever so sweetly when she laughed. She smiles at your attempts to use chopsticks, demonstrates for you patiently and teases you about forgetting your heritage.

“I don’t know my heritage,” you tell her, because it’s true. You were distilled from a giant bottle, as manufactured as the ‘Made in China’ label would suggest. “I…never knew my parents.”

You are only a pretender despite what your shared skin and supposed common homeland say. Sometimes you feel a bit like a changeling and you only wear the glamour of human skin stretched over an unearthly skeleton. Sent to infiltrate the world of humanity.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I guess we’ll just have to fix that, won’t we? Were you adopted? I have friends who were adopted as babies and they’ve ended up in similar situations, I can show you stuff if you like!” She looks entirely too giddy about being able to teach you a culture that isn’t truly yours to have.

The curl of warmth that arises in your gut at her face is something entirely new.

She hands you a small strip of patterned paper. “Write a wish,” she tells you. “And then we can make it into a little paper star.”

Bewildered, you just stare blankly. “Whatever for?”

She blinks owlishly before tilting her head and shrugging. “Well, why not?”

_Why not._

Why not indeed. You’d never really considered doing things for the sake of doing things - everything had to have a role, a purpose before. If something could no longer serve a purpose, it was thrown out.

What are you supposed to say to her when she says something like that?

When she looks at you like…like you have value. Even though you can do nothing for her, even though you’ve been nothing but a burden.

You stare down at the scrap of paper for a long, long time, the paper staring irritatingly back up at you.

It never occurred to you that you could  _want_. Could be allowed to wish for things.

You’re not  _sure_  what you want.

“Besides, you can unwrap them later and see your old messages again. They’re supposed to bring good luck, you know!”

Luck? Luck was a term for the superstitions people ascribed to random chance and probability, trying to see patterns in the chaos. There was nothing lucky about this task.

But she’s smiling at you.

“Aran? Have you got any ideas yet?” she smiles at you.

“I’m sorry,” you apologise, you hadn’t meant to let her down on such a simple task. “I’m not sure I know what to wish for. Can’t you just tell me what to write?”

She pauses and for a moment you freeze in fear, is she going to punish you for failing her? But Sarah simply smiles kindly at you. “No, Aran, that’s not the point,” her voice is gentle and it stings all the more for how you feel you’ve disappointed her. “It has to come from the heart. From you. It defeats the purpose if you just get someone to tell you what to do.”

“I’m sorry.” Your voice is barely higher than a whisper.

“No, no, you don’t need to be. It’s fine, you can fill it in at any time later if you want.” And Sarah, lovely understanding Sarah reaches over to lift your head up. “Tell you what. I’ll write my own one for you and let you hold onto to that one until the day you figure out what to write. Then I can grant you all the luck from my wish!”

She looks so pleased with herself that you haven’t got the heart to say no. You peer down at her calligraphy, the Chinese characters as neat and pretty as she is. “What does it say?” You’ve been learning from her but it’s still difficult for you.

The conspiratorial finger to her lips makes you unwittingly return her smile. “You’ll just have to learn to find out, won’t you?”

“You’re such a tease.”

“You like it, though.”

“…Maybe.”

* * *

 

The colours are faded now, the corners worn.

Sarah’s star has been a constant through all the things you’ve been through and now…

Now it’s been drenched, old ink starting to blot through. Soon it will nothing but a sad mushy pile of paper.

It hurts. It hurts so bad to lose the last thing you have of Sarah, her sweet kisses and tender voice disappearing like leaves on the wind.

Maybe why that’s you carefully unwrap the soggy remains of the paper star. You want to catch her final message to you, years in the sending.

Her handwriting hits you like a dagger to the heart - you’d forgotten she drew hearts over her 'i’s when she was feeling whimsical, before her cheeky English letters neatly transition into pretty little chinese characters. Forgotten the way the lines curled and danced, playful to the end.

> _Dear star,_
> 
> _I wish for Aran to bloom into herself, like a shrinking violet into an elegant rose! I wish for her to have friends. I wish for us to have many more happy moments together and I wish for her to be happy when I’m gone._

_…She knew._

You stare at the dissolving remains.

Something so precious.

Gone so easily, so carelessly, so quickly. Just like her.

Something inside you breaks and you let out a quiet sob, dropping to your knees. It’s not like you to be this emotional but you’d always known that eventually the dam would break. You hadn’t expected the last blow to come like this.

It hurts so much to know you’ve disappointed her. None of her wishes have come true. It figures that you would even keep disappointing her after her death.

* * *

 

Chen’s cold face hits you like a slap whenever you look at him. He could have been her brother and you can’t help but resent the way you gaze at him and feel the sting of her loss. It pains you to look into those dark eyes that are filled with nothing but suspicion where you keep helplessly searching for the warm adoration that never comes.

It really doesn’t help.

If you keep seeing her distorted memory in Chen’s face, it’s in Ricardo you truly see her soul reflected in. In the way he teases and loves so freely and looks at you with such warm smiles.

It’s not the same. She deserves better than this and Ricardo deserves better than to be your rebound, to be used as your second choice because you’re in too much grief after her loss. He wants more, you know that…but you just can’t. Not when the memory of her touch still haunts your dreams, even as you begin to forget her face. When those sweet smiles turn into tight frowns and dark eyes start to look at you with such wariness that you want to just break down and scream. Scream at Chen for existing, scream at Ricardo for smiling at you with the wrong face and scream at the world for taking the woman you loved away.

And then your world falls apart once more,  
And this time you have no photos left to remember anything with.

* * *

 

You will never forgive the world for taking away even the last remnants of her existence, the photos you used to touch so delicately and try to recommit her face into mind with. The glass teapot she gave you as a housewarming gift and the bundles of herbal tea she gave you along with it all. So many afternoons on the front porch drinking rosebud tea and munching on prawn crackers together as she giggled over your terrible pronunciation and offered to give you a practical demonstration in where to put your tongue.

It’s her you should thank for your fluent Cantonese that gets you connections to the triads, helps plant the seeds of your little criminal organisation into sprouting into something bigger than you could have ever imagined. Perhaps it was fate that you met her - that everything in your life was all just the set up for this. You are no longer as hopeful and foolish enough to think you can really escape your destiny anymore, that you could ever have been a real hero.

As inevitable as gravity.

It’s almost laughable how everyone thinks you’re just the demure little wife of some bigger fish as you pour them cups of jasmine tea and smile sweetly at them. If they’re going to stereotype you as some spineless submissive housewife you might as well play up to their expectations. No one really pays attention to you as you seat yourself with your legs underneath you out of the way, a pleasant little host to the end.

And truly, what an end it is as they die suffocation on the clear powder you slipped into their tea. As you quietly ring the little bell you have to signal your gang to dispose of the trash and ask how their day has been.

It’s all just business. But that doesn’t mean you have to be _rude._

* * *

 

These days you’re too tired to be angry. Even Chen’s attempts to get to you don’t work anymore - you are above that now. Calm. Collected. Untouchable.

It makes Ortega sad to see. “You never smile anymore,” he says, softly.

“There’s been little to smile about lately.” But you give him a small, sad smile anyway because even he hasn’t escaped unscathed by the long years. The distance between you has given you perspective - you can finally see him as he is without the weight of comparison standing on his shoulders. See the way he looks at you like you’re the ghost now, and isn’t that such a strange turnaround?

Sarah is gone, but you are still here. You are still here drinking tea with Ortega, and if you pour something a little harder than just plain tea into your cup, that’s hardly any reason for him to judge you. Especially considering the way he’s been drinking as well.

Looking at the way those lips smile down at you does strange things to your stomach, even as you feel guilty for betraying her memory.  You didn’t…you didn’t think you would ever love again, not after her. And…and you really thought you were getting better at this, that you weren’t just comparing Chen and Ortega to a woman they could never be.

So why.

Why do you still want Ortega to kiss you with those cheeky lips?

Why do you want Chen to look at you with those dark eyes with soft affection and not wary suspicion?

It would never work out. It would never work out and you know it all too well. Having emotions and desires is so very hard to deal with when they get in the way like this, if they could have trained that completely out of you life would have been much easier. But no. You just had to start caring. It’s all so messy and frustrating and you absolutely resent yourself for it.

Do you even like men, or is this all just the fading remnants of the only things that remind you of her? Are these just expectations they pushed on you for being what they assumed was female?  Do they…do they even respect the fact that you’re not quite fully a woman, despite how you tend to look? You couldn’t stand it if they would just put you into some mental picture of the demure 1950s housewife you use as an act. Because that’s just it. Another act, another role to take on when convenient and useful for your purposes.

You tend to be discreet with your androgynous looks, but Ortega at least knows your relationship with gender tends to be a bit…loose. You’re not really sure what Chen thinks - perhaps that you like to dress up as a tomboy at times.

You just shake your head and pour tea for them both. And if Chen quietly gives you a little nod of acknowledgement in thanks, and if Ortega smiles at you like he’s simply happy to be in your presence…

Well. You’ll take your little joys where you can get them.


End file.
